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Vendors and event organisers need to rethink how they do content, according to marketing specialist Trent McLaren.
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Profit-focused accounting events ‘have lost their way’
11 December 2023
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Accounting events have lost their way and stopped thinking about what their audience really needs, according to professional services marketing specialist Trent McLaren.
Mr McLaren, who co-founded marketing consultancy Journey almost a year ago, said vendors were spending tens of thousands on events and the shows themselves were proliferating, but the tax profession had lost interest.
“I think we're losing our way,” he said on the latest Accountants Daily podcast. “We’ve stopped understanding what it is that we're trying to do and what our motivations are for doing them in the first place.”
He said vendors and event organisers were too focused on profit and sales leads, instead working out a recipe so that everyone could win. The internet meant a world of content was just a click away and simply recycling webinars would fail. Tired content was leading to dwindling audiences.
“Vendors and brands and event organisers need to rethink how they do content. People are smarter now, they know what every marketer is trying to do and they don't want it anymore. They want practical real, nuts-and-bolts kind of stuff.
“Don't just tell me the grass is greener, don't get on stage and tell me that things are great and be visionary and whatever. I need you to sit there and show me the soil. How do you fertilise? How often are you watering it? What happens when the grass turns yellow?
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“I need war stories. Tell me about a situation where you had a client that lost $500,000, they lost all their pipeline, and then you helped them come out the other side. That's the stuff people want to know about.”
“It's not about the software. It's not about the service or whatever else. It's just practically telling me what happened, how, why, how to fix it.”
He said there were a whole range of practical issues that could usefully be addressed by someone who had experience of going through a problem and coming out the other side.
“[For example] how do you exit a partner if you've had a disagreement with a partner? How do you exit that person out of your firm?
“How do you buy into a new firm – you're a young guy or girl wanting to buy into our practice, what does that process look like?
“Buying a firm, selling a firm, flipping 3,000 clients to the cloud. How to make hard decisions among plenty of terrible options? How do you generate 100 referrals in two years?
“These are all things that people have done – tell me that, show me that.”
Despite the wasted money and poor attendances, the problem looked certain to get worse.
“Next year there's going to be absolute carnage – there’s going to be too many micro-events and all targeting the same people.
“Nine different vendors have said they’re thinking about running their own event, own roadshow, own thing next year. Some of them will do a really good job of it. And a lot of people will not do a good job of it.”
And people, especially post-Covid, wanted to have fun.
“Don't just stick me in a room and give me a limited bar tab of crap wine. Make it interesting.”
“Event organisers in general, they just need to think harder.”
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